inspired by Oil and Light - Saatchi Gallery and The Tate Modern

Saatchi Gallery

Richard Wilson

 

 

 ...in the Saatchi Gallery...this was amazing...it looks at first glance like an empty room, then you notice the smell of oil, and then start to spot small bubbles and the odd bit of dust that appear to be floating and then you realise that the room is filled with oil and what you are looking at isnt the floor but a reflection of the ceiling...absolutely brilliant! The way you start to see it really plays with your perception. So good.

 

Richard Wilson 20:50

1987

Used sump oil, steel

Dimensions variable

Richard Wilson’s 20:50 is truly a contemporary masterpiece. The work is the only permanent installation at the Saatchi Gallery and has been continuously shown in each of the gallery’s venues since 1991. Currently on display in Gallery 13 – a room custom built for the piece – 20:50 transforms the gallery into a site of epic illusion.

Viewed from the entrance platform 20:50 appears as a holographic field: simultaneously a polished floor, infinite clear pool, an expansive and indefinable virtual space that clinically absorbs and mirrors the gallery architecture. The room is in fact entirely flooded in oil.

Visitors are invited to examine the piece close-up via a walkway that extends into the lake, placing the viewer, waist deep, at the centre of a perfect mathematically symmetrical scope. Through this altered perspective 20:50’s phantasmical aura is enhanced, amplifying the disorientating and mesmerising experience of the space, and further confounding physical logic.

20:50 takes its name from the type of recycled engine oil used. It is thick, pitch black, and absolutely indelible: please take extreme care with your clothing and belongings, and no matter how tempting, please do not touch. 20:50 often has to be demonstrated to be believed: the liquid can be seen by blowing very gently on the surface.

 

 

 

 

Tate Modern

 

 

Dan Flavin

 

....so beautiful...lights from fluorescent tubes create installations ...these colours reflect on the wall opposite as people walk past, breaking the 'whiteness' and stillness as people become part of the art. The colour is lovely...so simple but works so well.